Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud optimisation services, today announced that Tesco, the UK's leading grocery and retail chain, is using the Akamai Dynamic Site Accelerator services to support the company’s 2010 Clubcard Bonanza, which will see millions of pounds of customer's Tesco Clubcard vouchers doubled-up through the special online promotion.

When setting-up the campaign, Tesco was aware that issuing the two million "double-up vouchers" that customers use to double their points online, was likely to generate high levels of traffic to its origin website. The team responsible for the website felt additional capacity would be needed to cover the campaign period and avoid the risk of any outages, as well as maintain the performance of the overall website. Having looked at ISPs and discovered that they couldn't support the kind of bandwidth Tesco needed, the company turned to Akamai for assistance.

"Having used Akamai previously we know that it would be straightforward to plug Akamai's services into our website to take the load from our infrastructure and provide the support we needed, no matter how much traffic visited our website," said Ed Camp, Head of Server &amp; Storage at Tesco.com. “Having first approached Akamai, it took just eight hours for the services to be put in place and we have been delighted with the results. It has given us the peace of mind that customers taking advantage of this promotion can do so whilst enjoying great online service and security.”

The campaign is still running, but peak traffic has so far reached 120Mb/s with Akamai's Dynamic Site Accelerator services, offloading 90% of this from the Tesco servers.

Malcolm Rowe, Regional Director for Northern Europe at Akamai, said; "eCommerce and retail are key markets for us in website delivery, with more retailers understanding the importance of delivering their dynamic content consistently fast. As more and more consumers shop online, and companies take advantage of the business opportunities this trend offers, demand for bandwidth and content delivery is increasing exponentially. We are pleased to be able to help retailers like Tesco to get the most out of these campaigns and to help them increase sales and turnover through their online businesses."

Akamai Dynamic Site Accelerator accelerates and secures the delivery of the most dynamically-assembled websites to consumers without requiring costly IT build-outs. Unlike traditional data centre-focused Web infrastructure, Dynamic Site Accelerator addresses the shortcomings of the Internet itself to reduce site abandonment rates and increase completed transactions.

About Akamai

Akamai® provides market-leading, cloud-based services for optimising Web and mobile content and applications, online HD video, and secure eCommerce. Combining highly distributed, energy-efficient computing with intelligent software, Akamai's global platform is transforming the cloud into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, transact and collaborate. To learn how the world's leading enterprises are optimising their business in the cloud, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.